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President Trump wants to put America back on track. Throughout the nation’s successful history, the free trade idea has fallen on deaf ears as Americans took their fate into their own hands. This was what the struggle for independence was … Continue reading →

The Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) proposed by Congress is intended to change how business income is taxed giving it features of a Value-Added-Tax (VAT), a cash-flow tax, and a consumption tax. The idea is to make the corporate income tax function as a quasi-VAT and less as an income tax on the earnings of U.S. producers. Clearly, violative of free trade principles affecting the U.S., the practice should be made the subject for U.S. trade re-negotiation, a challenge fully backed by the new Administration. This is a fair trade problem, not a problem about income taxation. The BAT “solution” makes for new problems. On several fronts, a BAT for the U.S. is likely to make matters worse. The driving force behind the BAT is the expectation that it will generate considerable tax revenue… Continue reading →

Obama has said that he intends to push the TPP in the lame-duck session of Congress. There is no better tactic for subverting democracy than the lame duck session. And the transnational corporate lobbyists are pushing hard for one! A few days wedged between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the average citizen is tired of politics and looking forward to some holiday cheer – and naive thoughts of a better world, is just what the Establishment needs to get its way. Continue reading →

Beijing kicked its trade offensive into high gear while Bill Clinton was in the White House, but looking the other way. And, while Hillary Clinton has been pushed into spinning some of her views during the current campaign, it does not seem that she has truly broken with the past to devise new policies to deal with the economic rivalries that have done so much damage to the U.S. economy and now jeopardizes national security as well. Continue reading →

The WTO is a supranational agency established in 1995 to prevent nations from adopting trade policies that give their domestic industries an advantage over foreign rivals. It can declare national legislation “illegal,” if it harms foreign interests. Archives around the world are filled with treaties and other documents that no longer hold sway because they no longer describe reality or fit the needs of major powers. The WTO needs to go into that pile. Then American statesmen can go back to the “protectionist” policies of national development that from its founding built the U.S. into the powerhouse of the 20th century, so it can remain on top during the 21st. Continue reading →